“This crime impacted the nation, and I daresay it impacted the world,” Commissioner Brian Roberts said. “It was a political assassination of a viable Democratic presidential candidate.”

During the hearing, Sirhan stuck to his previous account that he did not remember the shooting in 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after Kennedy won the Democratic presidential primary in California.

He said he recalled being in the hotel then going to his car and returning after realizing he had too much to drink.

Paul Schrade, now 91, told the panel that he believed Sirhan shot him but that an unidentified second shooter had killed Kennedy. Schrade was a Kennedy confidante who was one of five people injured in the shooting.

Schrade pleaded for the release of Sirhan at the hearing and apologized to him for not doing more over the years to secure his freedom.